“Your grammy,” Miss Angie said, “she knew a way to undo it.”
I had stubborn, unreasonable feelings about that Bible, andall Miss Angie’s asking only made those feelings stronger. I didn’t care whatshe was looking for and I didn’t care what Grammy’s witchery could have donefor her, because thinking on the things Grammy had done just reminded me of allI couldn’t do. “Sorry,” I’d say, sure and even, like I didn’t know the word wascrushing her slowly. “I don’t think so.”
Around the time I turned fifteen, Miss Angie lost patiencewith me and said I shouldn’t come home anymore if I wasn’t going to help herout. I remember she was bruise-faced that day, and I felt sorry and I feltfurious but mostly I felt a confused sort of uncomfortable, like I didn’t wantto see so much of her. I got to feeling glad that Grammy had hid me from somuch, and missing the days when anyone thought about what I should or shouldn’tsee.
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The baby sat inside of me for three months, and then died. Ididn’t tell Mr. Rishner, but I told the other woman sometimes, catching her eyein the ice-covered pond or the dirty window to whisper what I couldn’t say atthe dinner table. She had such mean eyes, and she never felt sorry for me, butshe soaked up my words without argument. When he shut the front door and wentoff with Baby at his heels, she stayed to scrape clean the breakfast plates andmop the floor, her movements tracing mine until we didn’t know the ends of eachother.
When we got dressed, she fought me tooth and limb to wearthe dingy calico. Sometimes I won and we wore the red silk; sometimes I didn’t.Fact is, there wasn’t room for both of us to get what we wanted. There washardly room for one. The white house was shrinking, squeezing tight until I waspulp and dead broken seeds. I felt my head bumping the ceiling sometimes, myfeet pushing through the floorboards into the foundation. The hallway was acrawlspace; the bedroom was a snake hole. Deep in the folds of my quilt, Iwished to hibernate the winter through. I scarcely slept at all.
There was a dream that came whenever my eyes shut too long:her dream, not mine, but I dreamt it still because we shared everything. Thebedroom walls were tree trunks, the sheets were wet black earth, my body was athorn bush. Mr. Rishner would roll across the bed so he was far from me andthen a cold damp arm would curl round my neck. If I turned my head I found thewindow open, a tree reaching inside with its trunk hunched over to wrapneedle-covered branches around my shoulders, my waist, my thighs. Shame woke mequicker than fear and kept me awake, still and too hot beneath the covers,until she ran from me laughing and I dropped back into the dream again.
I covered the window with curtains, then a couple oftwo-by-fours when the curtains started showing up in the dream. Mr. Rishnercame home with the dog, traced the boards with his fingertips admiringly, said,“Nothing gets in or out here, does it?” I thought I believed him.
I found a sprig of alder under my pillow one night and snuckout after he fell asleep to bury it beneath the porch. The night after, I founda whole branch dropping needles in the bedsheets. I said to myself: you can letyour head get crowded and you can let your house cramp up, but you can’t losecontrol of your marriage bed. So I dug Grammy’s carpetbag out of the closet andset the family Bible on the table. Dust flumed out, cigarette smoke, years-oldkitchen smells. Grammy wrote the rules of her world in tiny tight-packedcursive across the title pages of the Biblical books. Exodus said that ifyou break a coin and sew one half into your beloved’s clothes, they will haveto love you back. Ezekiel said to kill a witch, carve a heart in a treeand hammer a nail in a little further each day for a week.
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She fought me when I put on my boots and opened the frontdoor. We both knew the black alder leaning sideways into the bedroom window.For six days I carved her heart in the bark and hammered my nail inside, thenwent to the outhouse and emptied my guts. The sicker I got, the less I saw ofher and the happier Mr. Rishner was with me. He came home at night whistling,kissed my cheek when I met him at the door. He’d open a Farmer’s Almanac on thetable and tell me how the stars aligned, and I’d simmer a pot of something Icouldn’t keep down.
He said one night, “You expecting again?”
And I said, “I think so,” because I was, though not a child.
After dinner we shared a cigarette and a bottle of gin andthe sharp March air, and I thought I felt her go; in my head I was alreadyhammering my nail into the center of her heart, but she came back when I tookoff my silk and put on my cotton nightdress. In her dreams, the tree camethrough the window to pull me out of the bed and out of the house and out ofthe hills. And I was scared, but I was light, I didn’t ever stop. She ran medown the state highway on my bare feet until Hell opened up and swallowed thewhite-washed house inside it. I knew then you’re never a witch until the dayyou got to be one, and when I came to, I went to the closet to cut the brokencoin out of my dress.
The love spell inside the dress fought me. I was weak; I hadsix days of hammering in my heart. But I
